For a sleepy Mixtec-speaking farm town, where the priest arrived once a month on horseback, where corn grew in a little valley, where goats grazed in the forest, and where people lived and died and not much else happened for the past five hundred years, it was a small thing, maybe, but with the road what was once a six hour walk through the mountains to get to the nearest town became a thirty minute ride in the back of a pickup. [...] In the end, the road led not so much to the village as out of it, and it had one inevitable destination: the United States.

Der Amerikaner Matt Black fotografiert vor allem eines: vergessene Plätze und Menschen. Seit 2000 reist er regelmäßig nach San Miguel Cuevas in Mexico und dokumentiert in trashigem Schwarzweiß die Folgen der Abwanderung aus diesem entlegenen Dorf.

Sein Bilstil passt gut zu den Geschichten, die er erzählt: von Einsamkeit, Isolation und einem harten Leben zeugen seine Bilder. Sie regen zum Nachdenken an.